Facebook bans: Trump weighs in with retweets and tweets his thoughts - Vox.com

President Donald Trump seemed to spend a lot of time Saturday
morning on Twitter, retweeting Islamophobic content, as well as
sharing tweets defending far-right activists recently banned
from Facebook.

The president retweeted a video from Deep State Exposed, an
alt-right account that contains numerous Islamophobic tweets
and conspiracy theories, including some linked to QAnon. The
account’s author, Jeremy Stone, mentions in his Twitter bio
that the president has retweeted him nine times.

As explained, QAnon is a tangled group of
conspiracy theories that include claims prominent Democrats are
secretly being monitored, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is a
CIA asset, and that President Trump is leading a hidden war
against a pernicious, powerful, and hidden “deep state” working
to abuse children and enslave the American people.

In the tweet retweeted by the president Saturday, Stone falsely
claimed, “The ‘elite’ proclaim America must submit to Islam or
else.”

This isn’t the first time Trump has shared Islamophobic
content. In 2017, that had
been originally posted by Jayda Fransen, a leader of a
far-right British political party called Britain First. More
recently, the president to Twitter that tried to link Rep.
Ilhan Omar (D-MN) to the 9/11 attacks. Omar reportedly received
death threats as the video went viral.

Trump’s other retweets defended members of the far-right who
have either seen their social media accounts suspended or who
have been outright banned in recent days.

Paul Joseph Watson, an editor of the alt-right website
Infowars, on Thursday along with the site’s
leader, Alex Jones. Watson outside of alt-right circles for
tweeting a video White House press secretary Sarah Sanders used
in trying to ban CNN’s Jim Acosta from press briefings in
November 2018.

Infowars has been banned from Twitter, YouTube, Apple,
Facebook, and Instagram for spreading false information; the
personal accounts of some of the site’s contributors remain
active on certain social media networks, however.

Friday, Watson complained about being banned from Facebook and
Instagram, which Facebook owns, and included a link to a
YouTube video in which the editor lambasts the tech giant while
claiming citizens’ First Amendment rights are being eroded.
Trump retweeted this jeremiad Saturday.

“Dangerous”.My opinions?Or giving a handful of giant
partisan corporations the power to decide who has free
speech?You decide.

— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet)

The president once again attacked news organizations he has
been critical of in the past, calling out the Washington Post,
New York Times, MSNBC, and CNN by name. Just before doing so,
however, he retweeted an analyst for the pro-Trump conservative
media group , Sharyl Attkisson, who echoed
Watson’s concerns about censorship.

When did we decide, as Americans, that it's ok fo govt
& 3d parties to censor/ curate our info? That we cannot
be trusted with unfiltered info? That we shd only be able
to find info that *they* tell us is true on matters that
are opinion or in legitimate dispute?

— Sharyl Attkisson ️‍♂️ (@SharylAttkisson)

Picking up on the theme of a “slippery slope,” as Attkisson put
it, alt-right Canadian blogger Lauren Southern’s presidential
retweet argued the bans of alt-right figures are just the
beginning.

Lmao at establishment conservatives who think they won’t be
labeled the new “dangerous” / “extremist” voices when those
to the right of them are all banned. Good luck with that
one guys

— Lauren Southern (@Lauren_Southern)

As Vox’s Emily Stewart explained, figures on the right have
long argued Facebook and other social media companies are
unfairly targeting them:

Conservatives have for quite some time complained that
they’re being censored by social media, and Facebook has
struggled to respond. Part of that stems from a citing a former
Facebook journalist who said workers at the company routinely
suppressed news stories of interest to conservative readers.
Since then, Republicans and Silicon Valley have engaged in a
back-and-forth where conservatives accuse platforms of bias
and companies bend over backward to show that’s not the case.
After the Gizmodo story broke, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg
to discuss
how the social network handles conservative content.

Before pivoting to discussions of the economy, Trump had one
final retweet: missives sent by Mindy Robinson, host of the
right-wing show Red, White, and F You: Unapologetically
Patriotic.

Robinson complained about the suspension of conservative actor
James Woods from Twitter. Woods’ partner that the actor’s account had been suspended for
sending a tweet reading: “If you try to kill the king, you
better not miss. #HangThemAll.”

As Robinson notes, Woods paraphrased Emerson; however, as she
neglected to note, the second part of the actor’s tweet could
be seen as a violation of Twitter’s rules on violent speech.

Many Twitter accounts feature the disclaimer: “Retweets do not
equal endorsements.” The president’s account does not feature
any such language, and while a tweet he sent Saturday afternoon
avoided the sort of bigoted content seen in some of the
accounts he retweeted in the morning, it was clear the
president was building to a larger point in sharing the tweets
of these alt-right and conservative figures:

How can it be possible that James Woods (and many others),
a strong but responsible Conservative Voice, is banned from
Twitter? Social Media & Fake News Media, together with
their partner, the Democrat Party, have no idea the
problems they are causing for themselves. VERY UNFAIR!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)

In tying together social media companies, the media, and
Democrats, the president was able to attack three of his
habitual targets, and worked to reinforce the idea that all
three are against him and his supporters, lending even more
presidential credibility to the messages he tweeted in the
morning.

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